Life and learning in an uncertain world | Helen Whitehead

Monthly Archives: November 2007

Why should educational developers and learning technologists make efforts to ensure their e-learning materials are accessible? There is of course the legal side of things in the UK: The Disability Discrimination Act, Part IV 2001(SENDA) requires responsible bodies to anticipate the requirements of disabled people or students and make appropriate

One of the problems with citing online sources is that often Web archiving is still in its infancy. In the area of the arts which I have done a lot of work in, creative sites often disappear because of the shortsighted and underfunded nature of projects – putting a website

I love it when materials in a course turn out to be relevant and topical. In my Season of Inspiration writing course at the moment we are this week writing about caves and other underground spaces. We already have great inspiration from some fabulous photographs from Nottingham’s Papplewick Pumping Station

I have recently been doing risk assessments of some e-learning projects we have in train. There are some risks that seem to cross all types of projects in a variety of contexts. When assessing risks of e-learning projects I consider: * Likelihood (high, medium, low) * Potential impact (high, medium,

I’ve been {playing with} learning to use my new PDA/wonderphone: the HTC TyTN II (winner of several Best PDA and Smartphone awards). It has two cameras (both video cameras), voice recorder, music, Windows mobile with various programmes including Word, Bluetooth and wifi capability, synchs with my Outlook on the laptop

Do you use e-learning or learning technologies such as discussion forums etc. in teaching? Have you used or adapted Salmon’s 5-stage model or e-tivities framework in your teaching? Or have you used it at any time in the past few years? Gilly Salmon’s 5-stage model and e-tivities framework have been

I asked some practitioners what e-learning tools the staff in their institutions actually found useful. Here are some of their answers:

Course GenieThis is a product from Wimba (who have a site of good products) which allows staff to generate web pages from Word documents. It runs from within Microsoft Word as an add-on, so it’s possible for many of the formatting features of Word to be used. Various resources can be linked to the central web file created automatically by Word so learners can read materials, view presentations, search the internet or take quizzes as part of one learning “package”.

MonkeyJamFreeware animation software: designed to let you capture images from a webcam, camcorder, or scanner and assemble them as separate frames of an animation. It’s also possible to import other images and sound files. Will export as an .avi file.

Content Generator.netFlash-based e-Learning quizzes, games and applications (more use with school-level than FE or HE)

Content generator

Multiple Choice quiz generator

Match-up quiz generator

Penalty Shootout generator

Walk the Plank generator

Interactive diagram generator

Free basic level of multiple-choice generator, with licenses for more complex games (e.g., football shootouts) from £25-300 depending on individual or institutional licence.

Free Rice http://www.freerice.com/ Test your knowledge of vocabulary – for every word you get right, the sponsors donate 10 grains of rice through the UN. Great for anyone who enjoys words! The spelling (and the dictionary by the feel of it) is American, though.

OK, so it’s taken me a while to make the decision! My colleague has purchased a Nokia 95 (as recommended in this blog by James Clay). I am about to play with this one, and if I like it I’ll buy it! HTC TyTN So I will soon be better-connected

The Bazaar – Homehttp://www.bazaar.org/The Bazaar – portal for Open Source for Learning in EuropeThe Bazaar is a community portal for people who want to use, exchange and share Open Source Software and resources to support learning. Distance Learning through Telematicshttp://www2.plymouth.ac.uk/distancelearningThe University of Plymouth’s e-learning website, containing regularly updated pages of